


Little Wolf

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Alie Hawke [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, FenHawke through Dragon Age 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 22:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8686012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: Fenris and Alie Hawke are very different from each other, yet drawn together like magnets. Even so, Fenris seems to hurt her at every turn. She wants him anyway, and he's mystified by it.





	

_She really shouldn't be so beautiful,_ Fenris thought as he watched the dark-haired woman throw spells with the same ease with which she shot arrows.  _She's a mage. Surely she must be as power-hungry and cruel as the rest of her kind._ He tilted his head, watching her for a few moments longer from his hiding place atop a building at the edge of the alienage. Then he shook away his thoughts and left the distraction to distract while he took out the rest of the hunters.

Later, after Danarius' mansion has been cleared of demons, Fenris asked her what she sought.

"You want me to tell you and spoil all the fun?" she asked, a playful smirk on her full lips. They'd known each other only a few hours, but she was teasing him? From the way the dark-haired man at her side, who had called her his sister as he defended her, rolled his eyes this was normal.

Then she complimented him, her tone flirtatious, and Fenris had to cover his chuckle with a cough. Her brother seemed shocked when Fenris looked to guage his reaction, so that part must not be normal. That thought made it easier to cool the heat rising in his face. Why would she flirt with  _him?_ What was she looking to gain?

Later, after they had parted ways for the night and Fenris had disposed of the broken glass and pottery that littered his newest dwelling, he thought back over the entire encounter. It seemed clear that this Hawke was a natural leader, and her friends followed her example because they respected her. Carver, her brother, chafed at imagined leashes but was quick to come to her defense when he thought Fenris meant to cause trouble for her. The other two, a dwarf and a Rivani pirate, had been largely silent, content to let her make the decisions. Though the pirate kept giving him looks that made him uncomfortable; he knew lust when he saw it, and he was not interested. Especially not after being a slave for so long.

* * *

 

The next day, Hawke paid him a visit. When she came to him, it was with the same swagger and confidence that she'd shown before, but there was a wary light in her eyes. No doubt she feared he would turn her in as an apostate. He wouldn't, not unless she gave him cause; he didn't want the attention it would bring him.

She asked him questions, but some of them he would not answer. She didn't need to know that he didn't know who he was, that he remembered nothing before receiving his lyrium marks. He was surprised when she simply let it go.

She joked with him some more, and he couldn't help but laugh. She looked incredibly pleased when he did, but hid the expression quickly. He wasn't sure what to make of that.

She flirted with him again, making it clear that she found him attractive. In her face he read no deception. She seemed all but incapable of it, her face revealing everything she thought. Instead of turning her away with a brush off, he surprised them both by attempting to flirt back.

Her mouth opened slightly, her expression softening with surprise, but still she quipped, "You sound like you're about to ask for a loan." He chuckled. She was right; his attempt at flirting was a bit pathetic.

She left with more bounce in her step than when she arrived.

* * *

 

Over the following weeks, Fenris observed Hawke carefully. He told himself that he was watching for signs of possession or corruption, but more often than not he found himself watching her swaying hips or the grace of her strong arms as she spelled the arrows she fired. He found the way she fought far more fascinating than he expected to.

"Where did you learn to fight like that?" Fenris finally asked as she healed a deep cut in his thigh back in his borrowed mansion after clearing a gang of Hightown thugs. She'd told him that she wasn't much if a healer, but he refused to let the abomination cast magic on him.

She hummed softly as she worked, something he had learned meant that she was content. "Well, an apostate can't fight with magic in the open the way a circle mage would. That's why I only bring Anders to places I know his magic won't be seen by anyone who will live to tell about it; he fights like the circle mage he was and the Grey Warden he became.

"But if an apostate wishes to remain undetected, they must find a way to fight without magic. Would you believe that I first learned to shoot from the Lothering Templars?" Fenris looked up at her, startled. She grinned. "I never cast any magic around them, of course. I just needed to learn the basics. I practiced my magic well away from town with my father and sister. The first time my father saw me spell and arrow to catch fire as it met the target, he was so proud! It takes immense control, you see, not to burn the arrow up as it flies. He didn't even know it could be done. He was a circle mage too, you see."

"So you created this style of fighting yourself?" Fenris asked as her healing spell faded and she sat back with a sigh.

"My father helped some, but yes," she said, wiping the sweat off her face with her sleeve. His eyes tracked the movement; she was a bit too beautiful for comfort. Her short, raven black hair fell across her face like little daggers but never seemed to impede her vision. It also did not obstruct his view of her wide, striking ice blue eyes. Her skin was bronzed by the sun and naturally a few shades darker than her brother's, though still significantly lighter than his. Carver seemed to take after their mother more than Hawke did. Her cheeks and chin were sharp, and there were smiles tucked in the corners of her full, dark mouth. She was short for a human, the top of her head only reaching his chin. Though he was tall for an elf it was still odd to be around such a small human. It didn't help that Carver was a head taller than him and thick with muscle.

Yet for all her short stature and gentle, feminine features, Hawke was formidable. Her arrows were swift and deadly, and she had been known to summon lightning on the battlefield to stun and frighten their enemies. Her anger was as fierce as her laughter, as well. The thug who had managed to get a lucky hit on Fenris had known fear before he knew death.

Never once had Fenris seen her reach for the power of blood, neither her own nor that of their enemies. And she was never cruel. Even the thug she had punished had received the mercy of a quick death after being subjected to her fear spell, which would do him no physical harm and would protect Fenris from a second blow. He respected her.

* * *

 

Fenris came to cherish Hawke's frequent smiles and easy laughter. She always seemed so at ease, taking everything as it came. Never once did she issue anything that sounded even remotely like an order. He cherished that most of all.

And when Hadriana came for him after three years of silence, she never hesitated. With confidence and determination, she marched to the holding caves. Her usual fierce grin was nowhere to be seen behind the raw fury that lit her features.

"Fenris is a free man!" she had shouted to the hunters. A moment later, the one who had commanded her to "back away from the slave" had gone down with an arrow in his throat.

As they picked their way through the sand-dusted hills, Fenris was filled with a righteous fury that had settled like a ball of molten metal in his chest. He knew he would kill Hadriana at last. Looking sidelong at Hawke as she plucked her bowstring and her magic sent visible heat waves out from her slender form, he knew she would not hesitate to fill any slaver with arrows.

* * *

 

A slave, the last left alive, cried out for help. Hawke immediately shot the slaver nearest to the young elven girl. Fenris threw himself into the fight. These men would not kill another slave.

Hawke cried out briefly, and he turned as he freed his blade from a corpse. She had been grabbed from behind by a slaver, one who clearly had certain ideas for her before he harvested her blood or sold her. It was clear what he wanted in the way he rucked up her tunic to feel the smooth skin of her belly.

"Hawke!" he cried, charging for her. She didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes were wide with fright, her expression betraying that she knew exactly what was on the slaver's mind, and a moment later her power surged forcefully. The lyrium in his skin lit up like a star, brighter than anything he'd experienced before as her power passed over him harmlessly. The man holding her screamed, and Fenris stopped and stared in horrified awe as the slaver seemed to burn from within. It began in his hands where he touched her, his bones glowing through his skin as he shrieked in agony. His limbs quickly crumbled to dust, and the rest of him followed suit until all the remained of the man was a pile of ashes on the ground. It was unlike any magic Fenris had ever seen, to burn a man from the inside out like that.

The rest of the slavers died quickly, distracted by the sight of what had happened to one of their number. Slowly, with compassion in her face, Hawke approached the frightened slave. Fenris hurried to her side.

"Are you alright?" he asked her urgently. "Did he hurt you?" She smiled at him through the shadows in her eyes, but the slave thought his questions were for her.

"They've been killing everyone!" she cried, terrified. Where Fenris had no comfort to offer the poor girl, only guilt, Hawke had plenty. She calmed the trembling elf and gave her directions to her home in Kirkwall, promising the girl a position on her staff as a free woman, a servant and never a slave. Fenris could have kissed her for it.

* * *

 

"What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil?" Fenris snarled after Hadriana lay dead, her heart crushed and lying beside her lifeless form. He spoke in fury and frustration over what had been done to him as a slave, thinking of nothing but his own pain.

Hawke flinched as if he had struck her and took a half step back, her eyes wide and hurt, and Fenris remembered where he was and who he had said such cruel words to. After all she had done for him, accompanying him to these caves and always being ready to kill any slavers they came across, he had insulted the very fabric of her being. She wasn't like them, he knew that. He hadn't been thinking when he said it. She had tried to comfort him, offering soft words and softer touches, and he had thanked her with the verbal equivalent of a knife in the gut. He fled before he could make it worse.

* * *

 

When she finally walked through her own front door nearly a day later, she was weary and looked road worn. Guilt pinched Fenris as he stood up from the bench in her foyer; she must have been out looking for him.

"I had no idea where you were!" she exclaimed, surprised to see him in her house. She softened her tone as she continued. "I was concerned." She tried to act as if it were unimportant, but her expression told the truth; she had been frantic with worry for him.

He apologized, tried to explain. She deserved that, and so much more. She listened, saying little, and even though her face was as open as ever, for once he couldn't read it. Guilt pinched him again as he laid yet more of his own problems across her shoulders, and he turned to leave.

He felt a gentle hand on the bare skin of his arm, and gentle words flowed meaninglessly through his consciousness, and he reacted without thought. His lyrium flared as he slammed her into the wall, years as a fugitive honing his reflexes to attack her. She didn't resist at all, and he remembered where he was, who he was with. Her eyes were wide, surprised, but there was no hint of fear within the vibrant blue depths. The light of his lyrium faded, and an altogether different tension filled the air between them. Before he even understood what was happening, she was kissing him. To his eternal surprise, he kissed her back with just as much force without even hesitating.

She flipped their positions and his back met the wall he had slammed her into. Her hands slid from his shoulders onto the wall on either side of him as he pulled her close, and he wanted to beg for her touch on his skin. He gripped her backside in his gauntleted hands, and the heat of her body against his calmed his entire being. He fumbled with the clasps and buckles that held his gauntlets in place until he could drop them to the floor and touch her with bare hands. He drew a ragged breath as the lingering pain of the lyrium marks in his skin that always haunted him disappeared as if it had never been.

And then he was pushing her, guiding her through her house without ever letting their lips part. He heard a gasp from a side room, and a quick glance showed him the elven slave, now a servant, watching them with wide eyes and and hand over her mouth. She fled when he saw her, and he put her from his mind. When they reached the stairs, he gripped the generous curves of her ass again and lifted. She made a startled noise against his lips and gripped him eagerly. He kicked the door to her bedroom shut as he entered with her still in his arms. He dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, but her grip on him didn't loosen and so he followed her down.

It was unthinking, unrestrained passion that flowed through them both. Her nails raked across the bare skin of his back and shoulders, the raw magic that flowed with her pleasure sparking and tingling against his lyrium markings, and the sensation somehow heightened his own pleasure. She gasped his name and whispered encouragements, arching beneath him. When his teeth marked her neck she moaned and grasped the back of his neck to keep him there. Yet even in this she was gentle, asking for much but demanding nothing. Even in this, she gave him his freedom. His pleasure reached its peak as she gasped his name and clenched around him, and a sudden flood of memories assaulted him. The pleasure of her touch and the complete lack of pain she gave him opened a window in his mind that he didn't know existed, and as she trembled beneath him and he reached his climax he remembered everything he had lost.

And then the pleasure began to fade, and it took the memories with it. As he pulled out of her, she curled into him. He was shocked, stunned by everything that had occurred, and he let her cuddle against him. She whispered sleepy praise and quickly drifted off into slumber, but he remained awake, confused and frightened.

* * *

 

He waited until she woke up to leave. He owed her that, least of all. He didn't have the words to make her understand what was a mystery to even him, so he stared into the glowing embers of what remained of he fire as he waited, fully dressed and thinking hard about what to say.

"Was it that bad?" she quipped as she sat up. He turned to her. Her usual gentle smile was in place, the one she only gave to him, but there was something akin to terror in her eyes.  _I'm going to miss that smile._ The thought drifted through his head but he shook it away.

He tried to reassure her that it wasn't her fault, that he was just too damaged. She begged him to stay. And it broke his heart.

"Fenris, let me help you. We can work through this," she pleaded. "Just don't go." But he had to, he couldn't deal with any of it. She was sitting on her bed, leaning her elbows on her knees, completely naked, and he wanted so badly to take her again, to give her pleasure as she gave it to him. But the thought of those memories, returning only to abandon him again, forced him to flee.

She cried his name as he shut the door, and the broken syllables in her beautiful voice nearly destroyed him. He heard the beginnings of her sobs as he fled as if for his life. He knew those sounds would haunt him all his life, and self-hatred rose like bile in his throat. She deserved better. He knew she wouldn't be humming again anytime soon.

* * *

 

Merrill giggled, her wide, falsely innocent eyes watching him. He flushed and looked at his feet. He had been watching Hawke as she strode ahead of their small group, remembering the gentle touch of her hands on his bare skin.

"You're in love," Merrill said dreamily. Fenris' steps halted and he fixed the blood mage with a harsh glare. She didn't seem put off by it.

"I am not," he declared, far too aware of how defensive he sounded.

The blood mage needled him while the pirate giggled and encouraged her. Varric just watched, fascinated and clearly wishing for a notebook to record all this. It lasted until Hawke, far ahead of them, called for them to catch up. He was likely beet red by then.

* * *

 

Danarius was dead, and Hawke had helped to bring it about. She'd accompanied him to what he'd thought would be a simple, if tense and awkward, reunion with his sister. When his sadistic former master showed up, Hawke didn't hesitate. She defended him but ignored the magister's taunts. She looked down her nose at him as if he were a bug on her boot, and Fenris loved that.

When Fenris tore his former master's throat out, the man had a burning arrow lodged in his right shoulder and another in his left thigh. Hawke was a stronger mage than the blood magic-wielding magister of the Tevinter Imperium, and her arrows had met his flesh  _through_ his shields as if they weren't even there. Fenris was oddly proud of her.

"This is your family, Fenris," Hawke implored when he would have killed Varania for betraying him. "You don't want her blood on your hands," she said softly, and he remembered her sister, whom he had never met, and her brother, now a Grey Warden, and her mother, killed a sick mage.

"Get out," he snarled to Varania. Whether she deserved to live or not was irrelevant in the face of Hawke's pleas.

Varania drove one last barb under his skin before she left, and Fenris nearly crumbled.

"I am alone," he lamented, looking at the blood staining the floor of the Hanged Man.

Hawke stepped closer but didn't touch him. "I'm here, Fenris," she reminded him, her expression open and concerned and affectionate. He couldn't help it; he cupped her cheek in his hand. After a startled moment, she leaned into his touch. He smiled at her gently and she returned the expression.

She walked him home, and he asked her for time alone to think. She smiled and nodded, then turned away. He caught her hand before she could leave.

"Visit me tomorrow evening?" he asked her, not entirely certain why he said it. Startled, she nodded, and he let her go.

* * *

 

When she came to him the following evening, he had a bottle of wine and two glasses set out before his fireplace, and a plan. He knew what needed to be said after so long.

"If I could go back, I would stay. Tell you how I felt," he said, looking anywhere but at her.

"And what would you have said?" she asked hesitantly. He looked her in the eye and leaned forward, drawing strength from her open, hopeful expression.

"Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you," he told her sincerely, his voice low and intense.

Her expression shifted through emotions so quickly he couldn't read them. Her eyes misted with unshed tears and she surged up out of her seat. He caught her up and returned her frantic kiss with matching force. He held her close and kissed her as she cried. When finally they broke apart for air he gently brushed away her tears. She grinned and caught his hand.

"If there is a future to be had," he told her softly, "I will walk into it gladly at your side." She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob and squeezed his hand.

"I love you," she whispered brokenly, and his eyes shot wide.  _Is that what this is?_ he wondered.  _This feeling that I would die if parted from her, that I want to spend the rest of my life at her side, is that love? How would I know if it is?_

He wasn't sure, didn't know yet, so he kissed her again. And this time when the pleasure settled and she was curled naked against his side, he fell asleep with a peaceful smile on his lips and her happy humming in his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Why is there so little dialogue? I hate this little dialogue... But it happened that way because otherwise it would have turned into a game script, and I don't have the patience for that.


End file.
